10 SEA-SIDE PLANTS, 



Cannot be heard so high. I'll look no more, 

 Lest ray brain turn, and the deficient sight 

 Topple down headlong." 



This trade of samphire gathering from the cliff 

 has indeed proved a dangerous one. A few years 

 since, a man, resident in Dovor, and who had for 

 many summers gathered the plant for sale in the 

 neighbourhood, was suspended, as usual, by a rope 

 attached to a pole at the summit. The rope, on 

 this occasion, suddenly gave way, and the un- 

 fortunate man was precipitated to the base of the 

 cliff, and expired immediately. 



The word Samphire is a corruption of St. Pierre, 

 the plant having, in former times, been dedicated 

 to the memory of the Apostle ; and it was also 

 familiarly called St Peter's Herb. It had, besides, 

 the name of Crest Marine. The monks, as we well 

 know, gave the names of the wild plants known 

 to them, according to the times when they came 

 into blossom, making them the remembrancers of 

 their saints' days and festivals. Upwards of three 

 hundred plants., now in use., and recorded in our 

 works of medical botany, under different names, 

 were known in years long passed away in the 

 monasteries, as the medicinal herbs used by the 

 religious orders. A writer in Bees's Encyclo- 

 paedia says that we ought to pronounce and spell 

 the name of this plant sampire, our modern ortho- 

 graphy and pronunciation being a corruption of 

 this. But our quotations from the old writers 

 serve to show that various modes of spelling the 

 word were used in past times ; nor indeed need we 

 wonder at this, when even in the days of Queen 

 Elizabeth a man would spell his own name half a 

 dozen ways if it could possibly bear such a variety 



